New output management determination in billing documents

As you know, in S4HANA environment, new output management is introduced.

This article is mainly introducing how to setup new output determination via transaction OPD for billing document on S4HANA on-premise system.

Then let’s start.

After following the activities mentioned in note 2292539 – SAP S/4HANA output control – configuration, sometimes you may find that the output is determined incorrectly or not determined at all.

Then you‘ll need to check OPD(Output parameter determination) setting further.

OPD(Output parameter determination) is where you can define how the system determines output parameters for a specific business document. It is comparable to “Output Determination Using the Condition Technique” in the SAP Business Suite.

There are multiple determination steps in OPD.

It includes determination step of Output Type , Receiver , Channel , Printer Settings , Email Settings , Email recipient , Form template and Output relevance for Billing Document.

When doing output determination , system will determine the steps from top to down.

It means system will firstly determine output type , next is receiver , then channel ,and so on.

This rule is also applicable to table contents.

For determination steps Output Types, Receiver and Channel , multiple matches could be determined.

This is controlled by Table Setting -> Return all matches found .

For example, if this indicator is not set, when the first entry has been found, system will not consider determining the following ones in billing document.

If this indicator is set, though one entry is found in the beginning, system will still try to find rest ones and determine them in the billing document.

The rest determination steps could not have this indicator changed because of DDIC object delivered.

If you tried to do so, below errors will be issued:

Let’s take look at these determination steps one by one.

Determination step : Output Type

The grey fields in OPD setting are the condition columns, the green fields are result columns.

All of them needs to be maintained manually.

During output determination in this step, system will use the value maintained in billing type(condition column) to find the output type(result column) also dispatch time(result column).

Other determination steps are the same.

Here for field dispatch time, I would like to explain more:

Dispatch time ‘1 – Immediately’ means system will trigger output automatically when document is saved.

Dispatch time ‘2 – Scheduled’ means system will need to use transaction VF31F to trigger output processing.

After output determined in billing document, you can also adjust the dispatch time manually.

Determination step : Receiver

This step is important. The Role must be defined in the result column(green part), otherwise there will be no output determined in the billing document. This presents which role will have output to be sent to.

In this step, there is one more thing needs to be consider. It is field ‘Exclusive Indicator’.

If this indicator is set to ‘X – true’ , then the left table content entries will be ignored.

That means, in the billing document, only role ‘X1’ and ‘AG’ could get determined in this case.

Role ‘RG’ and ‘RE’ will not be determined due to exclusive indicator set for Role ‘AG’.

Determination step : Channel

This is where the needed channel could be maintained. There are four channels could be selected which are Email, IDOC, Print and XML. The exclusive indicator in this step has the same function as in determination step ‘Receiver’.

Determination step : Printer settings

The needed printer could be defined here. Please also note that in Printer Spool Devices supported by new output management is restricted to only PDF device types (PDFUC : PDF Unicode 1.3 / PDF1 : PDF ISO Latin1 4.60+).

This is mentioned by Symptom part in note 2684805 – Supported PDF printer spool devices

This could be checked by using transaction SPAD -> input the printer used -> check the device type below:

Determination step : Email settings

The email address(sender address) determined in billing document is retrieved from BP master data or via this determination step.

If you have maintained email address here, the setting here has the higher priority.

The email template used in billing document could be manually entered or maintained in this step.

Determination step : Email recipient

The email address (receiver address) determined in billing document is retrieved from BP master data or via this determination step.

If you have maintained email address here, the setting here has the higher priority.

You can maintain multiple email addresses in this determination step by using ‘;’ to separate them.

You can also define the email type code with TO, CC, BCC.

Determination step : Form template

This step is to be used as maintaining form template used for each output. Please also make sure that the maintained form templated has been assigned to the output type in SPRO ->Cross-Application Components -> Output Control -> Assign Form Templates (note 2292539)

In the billing document, you can also change the form template manually.

If the field ‘Relevant for Accrual’ is maintained as ‘X’, only when billing document(Field VBRK-ACCRREL is set to ‘X’) is relevant for accrual this condition column can be met.

Determination step : Output Relevance

This is the step to check whether the output item is relevant for output.

If the relevance indicator is not set to ‘X – true’, in the billing document the determined output item will not be relevant for output.

That means the status will remain as ‘In preparation’.

The above all information is about customizing in transaction OPD(Output Parameter Determination).

Additionally, I would like to add some tips regarding this transaction.

Tips:

• About simulation function in transaction OPD.

If you have got problem in output determination, usually it is caused by incorrect customizing in OPD.

Then you may consider to simulate the determination in OPD setting first.

The steps are below:

i.1.Select the determination steps you would like to simulate

i.2.Press ‘Continue’

i.3.Enter the value and press ‘Execute and Display Processing Steps’

i.4.The result and processing logs shown.

• About other conditions column needed in table contents.

If you want to have more conditions in table contents for output determination, you may consider adding condition column via Table Settings by selecting ‘Insert Column’ from Contents Data Objects below, please also be aware that remove or create a new column in ‘Result Columns’ part is not allowed since it will break the structure , it is only allowed to edit ‘Condition Columns’ part:

Related notes:

KBA 2656346 – Error ‘Item is not relevant for output’ issued when processing output for billing document

note 2292539 – SAP S/4HANA output control – configuration

note 2684805 – Supported PDF printer spool devices